The present application relates to surgical tools and more particularly to rechargeable, electrically powered tools and methods for delivering impacts during surgical procedures.
Many orthopedic surgical procedures require a surgeon to deliver one or more impact to a surgical tool, an implantable prosthesis, a tissue fastener, or directly to a bone. For example, surgical hammers are used to position a knee implant or a hip implant with respect to a bone, or to drive a fastener such as a retaining pin, a bone nail or a tissue tack into bone, for repairing bone fractures or to reattach damaged tendons or ligaments to the bone. In addition, surgical impacts may be applied directly to bone to prepare a hole in the bone as part of a surgical procedure, or to create local defects such as microfractures in a bone surface to induce larger scale healing at the surgical site.
Current surgical impact tools are generally configured either as a conventional hammer having a weighted head mounted at an end of an elongated shaft, or as a weighted slug that is freely slidable along a shaft between two mechanical stops. An impact of the slug against one of the stops is transmitted to an end of the tool, which can include a fitting for temporary coupling to an implant, a fastener, or to another tool such as a bone fracture pick or awl. While providing more control in some surgical procedures than may be available using a conventional hammer, slide hammers can have disadvantages including relatively large dimensions along the direction of impact, and may require two-handed operation or additional assistance from a surgical associate.
As arthroscopic surgery becomes increasingly common, where orthopedic procedures are performed entirely via small portals opened through the patient's skin, precision in the positioning and gauging of surgical impacts becomes ever more critical to achieve desirable surgical outcomes. Both conventional hammers and slide hammers require the surgeon to perform relatively large-scale, abruptly terminated mechanical motions that can compromise this precision.
Electrically powered hammers are known in the construction arts and can include linear or rotary internal actuators for generating an impact, for example, as disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/741,786 to Camp, and U.S. Pat. No. 7,789,282 to Fukinuki et al., respectively, both of which are hereby incorporated by reference herein in their entirety, but such construction tools provide neither the control or sterility required for use in arthroscopic procedures, and a need exists for improved surgical impact tools.